Stone stopped pacing and stood in front of me. With her hands leaning on the arms of my chair, she pushed in until our faces were mere inches apart. “You cannot get away with anything, clone. I will always be smarter than you.”
“I thought we were the same person,” I replied, preparing myself for the consequences of my smart mouth.
She pursed her lips, sneering them into a smile. “Oh, we are, clone. But I have many more years on you. Whatever you’re thinking, I had that thought thirty years ago. Enjoy your last days, your time for duty is coming.”
“If we’re the same,” I said. “You’re killing yourself. Once you’re done with me, that’s it. No more clones. How does it feel to be so genetically defective that the law stops you from making any more of us?”
Stone stood up.
Her hand slapped across my face.
Hard.
My head spun with the force. The sharp, metallic sting of blood filled my mouth from my cut cheek. She had some serious force behind her blow.
She laughed at me as I held my cheek in the palm of my hand. It didn’t help the painful sting but it felt better to cover the damage so she couldn’t admire her handiwork.
I couldn’t be the same as her.
I just couldn’t.
Her eyes never left me as she returned to her desk. She stood there calmly, looking out the window and turning her back to me in a show that she wasn’t afraid of me. I could attack her from behind, but she knew I wouldn’t.
Maybe that proved the difference between us.
She would have attacked.
I wouldn’t.
The fact she understood this difference was enough to make my blood boil. I wanted to rush at her, throw her through the window until every shard embedded in her flesh and the ground ended her life. The force of my desperate desire to harm her took me by surprise. I hated her, but I’d never wanted to hurt anyone as much as I wanted to hurt her before.
Maybe we were the same after all.
In the silence, Stone started coughing. It started out as a small splutter but quickly took her by the neck and started strangling the breath from her.
The doors to her office burst open as guards rushed in. Two forced me to stand, dragging me from the room just as Doctor Wagstaff hurried in and went to Stone’s side.
The last glimpse I saw of her was her hand covering her mouth.
Red with blood.
Guards took me back to my cell, roughly dragging me along when my foot didn’t want to hold my weight any longer. They didn’t understand my defect, didn’t care that my foot was painful when it was twisted and forced to move too quickly.
They threw me into my cell and locked the door before hurrying back upstairs.
Like I said, the guards were acting differently.
Normally I always had at least one in the basement with me. Most of the time they would stand on the stairs, just out of my sight, so they didn’t have to see me either. But I always knew they were there. Leaving me completely alone was out of their routine.
And it meant something was happening.
I craved for routine, for normalcy. Nothing scared me more than when the guards were not following their protocol. They had rules, procedures, to deviate from them was against their training.
My mind kept replaying Stone in her coughing fit. What was wrong with her? Ordinary people coughed, I’d seen more than my fair share of that in the Defectives’ village. But ordinary people didn’t cough up blood.
Doctor Wagstaff had been worried about her, the concern was written in every one of his features. He’d looked at me the same when he had examined me earlier. It was like a puzzle that he realized he would never be able to solve and it saddened him.
What was wrong with her?
If Stone wasn’t in full health, she would only try to kill me faster. If there was even a chance she needed my organs, she wouldn’t hesitate in ordering their removal.
I was doomed.
The clock counting down my life just halved in time, I was certain.
Footsteps on the stairs demanded my attention, pulling me from the screaming panic inside my mind. I looked up just in time to see the doctor standing at my cell.
His hair was disheveled, like he’d been raking his hand through it a few dozen times. His tie was undone, something I had never seen before.
“Hello, Wren.” He was breathless when he spoke. Had he run all the way down here?
Was Stone in that much need of my organs?
My stomach clenched at the words that would next leave his mouth. They weren’t going to be ones I wanted to hear. But they probably were the ones I had been expecting for a very long time.
“Hello, Doctor,” I replied.
“The labs have examined your blood work from this morning.” He paused, needing to catch his breath. “You do have a virus. You need to take some medicine in order to recover.”
I stepped back as far as I could until I pressed into the wall. My mouth clamped down as my head shook from side to side. “No,” was all I could manage.
“You have to trust me, Wren. You need this medicine. It will help you.”
“No.”
He held up the pill between his fingers. It was red, it reminded me of Stone’s blood. “You need this, Wren. I’m asking you to trust me. Have I lied to you before?”
He hadn’t.
Doctor Wagstaff was the only one who had told me the truth about everything. Sometimes I didn’t want to hear it, but he had said it anyway.
But he didn’t have to be lying now for me to not want that pill. It might make me better but I didn’t want to get better. It would mean I was primed and ready for my organs to be taken so Stone could pick and choose what she needed.
“No,” I repeated.
The doctor looked toward the stairs before turning back to me. His hand shook slightly, betraying his agitation. Something had rattled him, I didn’t think that was possible. Not the steady, reliable doctor.
What was going on upstairs?
What was happening to Stone?
He looked at me again with his sad, crystal blue eyes. “Wren, this is important. It is in your best interest to take this pill. You need it for your survival.”
There was something in his tone, something in his eyes, something that told me to pay attention to his words.
“Trust me, Wren. Please. You need this.”
I pushed away from the wall and took a tentative step in his direction. He didn’t have his medical bag with him this time, another sign that something wasn’t right.
He held out the pill with his hands that were undeniably shaking openly now. I took it between my fingers, looking at it as if the answers I needed were written in tiny print on the side.
They weren’t.
It was red all over with no signs of anything that might help me know what to do.
“Take it with water and lie down. You’ll know what to do when the time comes,” Doctor Wagstaff said. He nodded toward the basin where a small plastic cup was stationed.
I tentatively took a few steps closer to the sink. My hand turned the faucet to fill the plastic cup. I had everything I needed to take the pill. I could swallow it down as if it was nothing.
The doctor’s eyebrows arched as he eagerly nodded me on. My eyes kept flicking from him to the pill. He really wanted me to take it.
Was it because it would make me healthier?
Or was it because Stone needed me to die faster?
“Please, Wren. Trust me,” Doctor Wagstaff pleaded.
He had never lied to me.
I trusted him.
I swallowed the pill.
Chapter 8: Reece
Davis was my target as I watched him from across the lawns around base. He had left his dormitory block and was now heading toward the mess hall for breakfast.
In eleven minutes we were all to report to duty. He was cutting it fine. Maybe he’d drunk too much of the homemade booze last night and slept in.
When I awoke, my throat felt sore and rough from the cigarette smoke. My eyes were ringed in red from the same thing. I’d stayed away from the alcohol so at least I didn’t feel like puking my guts up.
Davis was someone I needed to know more about. He’d been too quiet last night when the conversation drifted to the Defective Clones. He had kept his opinion closer to his chest than his cards and that intrigued me.
Nobody could be that free from opinions.
Especially a member of the President’s Personal Guard.
Even I’d been careful to throw in some comments and grumbles of agreement. Perhaps that was the real cause of my sore throat. I hated talking badly about the Defectives but it was expected of me. Saying nothing was just as bad as declaring sympathy for them.
Which was a lesson Davis was soon to learn.
I pushed through the doors of the mess hall and scanned the room. He was shoveling down food at a table, hurrying to make sure he made it to mission command.
He was also alone.
Perfect.
I slid into the chair across from him, offering a smile I hoped asked him to trust me. “Hey, Davis. Great game last night.”
He looked up from his plate. If he was surprised to see me, the new guy, sitting there he didn’t let on. He needed that kind of ability last night. “Hey.”
If I’d had all the time in the world I would have been able to babble on about the weather and make small talk to settle into the conversation. I could make Davis feel comfortable and provide a safe space for him to open up to me.
I didn’t have that kind of time.
I had six minutes at best.
So all that touchy-feely stuff was going to have to wait. I got straight down to business. “I couldn’t help but notice you didn’t have much to say about the Defective mission last night.”
That got his attention.
Davis’s head snapped up, his spoon hanging a few inches away from his mouth. “Not much to say about it.”
“Not much to say, or do you only have the wrong things to say about it?” I prompted. I needed to get him to admit to being a sympathizer or member of the Resistance without giving myself away. It was a difficult balance to find.
“What are you saying?”
“Nothing. Just that I might have some thoughts on the subject myself.”
He finally shoved the spoon in his mouth and continued eating. Davis was hard to rattle, if he was a member, Joseph had chosen him for a reason. “It doesn’t matter what we think. A mission is a mission.”
“But you don’t agree with it.”
“What’s it to you?” he asked.
“I think you’re a sympathizer and I’m saying I’m fine with that,” I said casually, hoping it was enough to get him to admit the same thing. If not, I could only be a few minutes away from being hauled away on my ass.
“They’re dangerous words, guard.”
I shrugged. “I get the feeling they’re safe with you.”
Davis looked around, making sure there was no-one around to overhear us. Even though we were largely alone, he leaned in closer for added protection. “So what if I am? Are you going to tattle on me?”
“No, I’m not. You can trust me.”
He snorted and a piece of food spat onto the table. “There’s nobody to trust in Aria but yourself.”
“I’m telling you I’m trustworthy,” I assured him. I would have cut off my left arm and waved it at him if I thought it would convince Davis.
“So you’re admitting to being a sympathizer?”
“I’m admitting to nothing,” I said. “But there is a Defective I made a promise to that I fully intend on keeping.”
“That was stupid. You can’t promise anything to a Defective, nothing is certain anymore. Not with Captain Johnson determined to make them extinct.”
“This one is special.”
“Yeah? Who’s her Maker?”
It was now or never. I was about to make the stupidest mistake of my life or the smartest one. I wished they weren’t so close on the line.
“She’s Stone’s clone,” I blurted out, putting the words out there for the consequences to come and bite me. It was up to Davis now to decide how this was going to go.
“Stone’s clone?” Davis whisper-yelled at me. “Dude, you are walking on a knife’s edge and are going to cut yourself right down the middle.”
“I promised her I’d help.”
“You’ve got no chance of saving her. You heard what the guys said last night. Stone is going to cut her into pieces and there isn’t anything you can do to stop it.”
He was right.
Davis spoke the truth.
But that didn’t mean I gave up. I’d already come too far to give up on Wren. While she existed somewhere in Aria, I would continue fighting for her.
Maybe I was stupid.
“I know it’s a long shot but I’m doing it anyway,” I replied. I hadn’t noticed when my fingers had bunched into fists. “Can I depend on your help?”
“It’s a suicide mission,” Davis pointed out.
“I’m not asking you to come with me, I’m asking you for help.”
“What kind of help?” With that one question, I knew I had him. Davis was a sympathizer, that was for sure. Nobody got this far into a conversation about Defectives without feeling something for them. My instincts had been right on point.
“I need to get into Stone’s estate. If the guys were right last night, that’s where she’s keeping her. I have to find her and get her away from Stone.”
Davis pursed his lips while he took everything in. I could practically see a clock over his head, counting down our minutes until we needed to report for our daily mission. If he didn’t say something soon, I was going to explode from the anticipation.
Time was of the essence.
And we didn’t have any to spare.
“Davis…” I prompted.
“I don’t know how you’re going to get in,” he replied bluntly. “That place is tighter than the labs. I don’t have any magic information for you, sorry.”
Davis picked up his tray and stood, walking away from the conversation. He didn’t look back as he went outside. There was no time to dwell or replay the conversation in my head, I followed him out and stood with the other guards while we waited for our mission orders.
All hope I’d had of finding assistance went up in smoke when Davis had left the table. He didn’t want to help me and there wasn’t anything he could offer that would be of use.
But surely there had to be a way into Stone’s private complex? It was a big place, I’d been there a few times myself. People were coming and going all day long with the number of staff she employed.
There had to be a way in.
If not a way out.
Wren didn’t have time for me to figure it out. She needed to escape now, and spending another day walking backwards and forwards protecting corrupted parliamentarians was going to kill us both.
Our superiors stepped out onto the fixed podium to read off the assignments for the day. I waited for my name impatiently, itching to get moving.
There didn’t seem to be any order to the groups and names as they were called out. It definitely wasn’t alphabetical, it seemed like they pulled names out of thin air and threw them together haphazardly.
Our numbers dwindled until there were only about a dozen of us left. It was enough for three groups. Davis was standing two down from me, I hoped to be assigned to his group so I would have all day to work on him and convince him to help me.
The next group was assigned to Stone’s estate, my heart stopped beating while I silently prayed my name would be called. Three spots were filled, with the last one going to…
Davis.
He stepped forward, raising his hand instead of joining his group to get started. “Sir, I am not feeling well. I would like to request leave to visit the medic.”
Sergeant Williams wasn’t happy, his disappro
val was clearly set in his jowls. “You don’t look sick, guard.”
“I vomited this morning, I think I have a bug,” he insisted. Davis caught my eye, giving me a pointed look.
It took a moment for me to catch on but he was clearly trying to tell me something. I put up my hand as realization sunk in. “Sir, I can fill in for him. I’ll join his group.”
Williams looked between us and then back at the electronic tablet he was reading from. “Fine. Davis, go to the medic and make sure you get a certificate. Thompson, you can join Group Theta.”
Davis went off, heading toward the medical offices while I hurried to join my new group.
I was going to Stone’s private estate.
I was going to Wren.
It was hard to sit still in the SUV as our driver took us down the streets and around the corners that would take me closer to Wren. It was half excitement and half terror. I was afraid of failing Wren and leaving her there.
I would have to make sure that didn’t happen.
The only way to overcome my fear was to rescue Wren and get her the hell away from President Stone. Failure was not an option and never would be.
Stone’s complex was easy to spot as it was easily twice as large as any of the surrounding properties. High fences kept the public away and her privacy intact. The place didn’t exactly urge you to ring the bell to borrow a cup of sugar.
We passed through security checks before we were allowed admittance. Our vehicle was exempted from the compulsory bomb checks which cut down our travel time considerably.
The driver let us out and then returned to base while we were addressed by the on-site security head. He told us to stick to the outside unless we were commandeered inside for a particular task. I got the sinking feeling the restroom trick wasn’t going to work here.
I would need to find another way. Wren was nearby, she was within the walls of the brick building. All I had to do was get to her, see with my own eyes that she was alive, and I would figure out the rest. If I could get to her, I could get her out.
The four of us split the perimeter equally before we set off in different directions. I was assigned to the back of the building, which was supposed to be the easiest area due to the accessibility problems any intruder would face. The back of her estate faced a cliff.
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